How about a good old Camera Blind Test?

[KnightsFan]

B and K for the dog. I think most looked good except J and L.

E and F for the lake. I think most looked bad, with either way too much blue (eg K) or too little (eg L).

I guess E would be my overall favorite, it looks pretty good on both the dog and shore.

Thanks for the video!

[Andrew Reid]

When do we find out?

9 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

B for the dog and L for the lake for me.

Just as an aide-mémoire when reading everyone else's choices I've made these

Looking at it again, K is speaking to me.

Can't quite put my finger on why.

The dog shot especially... very nice.

[Mattias Burling]

9 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

When do we find out?

The votes have started to slow down now so if I find time to edit tomorrow. Otherwise it might have to wait until the weekend.

[kye]

32 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

The votes have started to slow down now so if I find time to edit tomorrow. Otherwise it might have to wait until the weekend.

There's no need to rush.  By doing the right things we make consistent progress, which is more than can be said by most  

[Mattias Burling]

Counted all the votes so far. The results are interesting and partly funny

[heart0less]

Wonderful!

That's why we should run more of tests like this.

 

Screw the specifiations rat race and just appreciate the the final image.

[Mattias Burling]

Amen, hopefully the $200 challenge will prove that even further.

[Andrew Reid]

2 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

Counted all the votes so far. The results are interesting and partly funny

A Pentax won?

[Jimmy G]

Hi Mattias,

Just a few discoveries (that might or might not have a bearing on folks' evaluations) based on my watching your test on both a non-retina 27" iMac and an iPhone 8-Plus. The color rendition on the older iMac yielded a less color-saturated viewing experience than the iPhone's True Tone retina screen. Also, using Safari on the iPhone defaults to 360P and needs to be overridden in the playback settings to the max-available 720P for that combo, interestingly viewing on the the iMac via Firefox allows for 1080P resolution.

Thanks for taking the time to put together this exercise, I've been having some fun since last night giving each camera sequence a going-over as a personal observation-test and learning experience. I much appreciate your patience in not revealing the answers quite yet as I'd be a bit miffed at missing out on the chance to thoroughly embarrass myself here on the forum with my forthcoming take on the matters...

First off, can I say upfront that none of the clips wowed me IQ-wise on the lakeside sequences?! I'll get to that shortly...

Two things that stood out to me immediately (and could have been separate tests in their own right) were, 1. for the dog sequence, "why one should never shoot their pet at point blank distance with a wide-open fast lens indoors for the sake of exposure" and, 2. for the shoreline sequence, "can anyone determine the actual colors of that canoe?" Ha! For aesthetic points only, 1. in that most of the dog's face is in focus due to a proper depth-of-field/aperture choice appropriate for the subject matter, goes to B, C, D, J and K...(L is actually focused on your pet's nose! LOL) and, 2. having not seen the original footage myself it's hard to determine whether youtube's compression is adversely affecting (read: compounding) the original compression for each sequence.

Phew, having gotten all that out of the way, my IQ assessments (based on your "go by feel" criteria)...

For the Dog sequence I found I was favoring the warmer renditions that showed overall deeper face focus with K being tops followed by C or G. (FWIW, A is lacking vital detail to my eyes, B would have been a contender except for the cold rendition, C would have been a finalist except for the DOF selection, D is showing too much in-camera sharpening, E might have won if the lens DOF was more subject appropriate and its color flatness seems workable for post, F had color overkill for my tastes and the DOF too shallow, H failed on colors being too rich for my tastes, I's DOF way too shallow for pet photography/videography, oofah, J has overdone detail and way too cold for these eyes, L has some nice detail, too bad about the nose focusing and shallow DOF.)

For the lakeside sequence, none of the above...really. Just looking at the wooden planks atop the floating/bobbing dive platform reveal obvious codec breakdown across the different sequences (some handling it much worse than others...>cough< A, B, E, G, H, J) while viewing at 1080P, something that my eyes just couldn't ignore so I wasn't "feeling" any of them. Color-wise the three major fails to me were B, H and J for trying too hard to look like film emulsions. F is a blurry mess. B, D, F and I all lacking vital detail, conversely G and J being too crunchy with detail. C, D, F, G, H, and J all being too contrasty for my tastes or uses. And frankly (as mentioned) the colors on the canoe are all over the map and I dare anyone (with the exception of the OP) to know what its true colors to be! Ha! That I'd have to choose, then E for detail and shadow retention (giving me the impression that I might be able to do something with it), followed by L for seeming detail retention, and I for its codec (wood dock test) seemingly surviving YT compression.

Anyhoo, them's my votes! :)

[webrunner5]

For the lake scenes I picked the one to me that looked on the brown side when the water wave hit the shore. That to me is a more realistic coloring than guessing what the Canoe color is. Doesn't mean it is right though lol.

[Video Hummus]

B & K for the good boy.

Lake was hard, I guess L. None of them really stood out. 

[austinchimp]

Missed the vote, but I liked E, G, I

[MrSMW]

Dog I went in no particular order; DGI

For lake, I went; DEJ

To make a proper judgement, I'd need a bride & groom though!

[Mattias Burling]

The results are in. Some are a little funny, others kinda expected but still interesting.
When I counted the first time a few days ago the funny part was that J wasn't to far behind I. But I didn't expect this.
(BTW, this morning J was still in the lead between the two.)

 

[Yurolov]

Not many went J on here. I'm happy with having gone F haha. 

[elgabogomez]

So it seems I’m partial to the full frame look, to hell with the resolution, the one I picked as the one I liked was H... 

[Andrew Reid]

The results are flat out hilarious

I think YouTube compression killed the Blackmagic. It looked like a 2010 H.264 camera to me.

I thought @Mattias Burling was actually testing some $200 cameras for the competition

Amazed to see the Olympus PEN F do well. It's a good stills camera, I wouldn't have it as my main video one though... Codec is mush and so is the image!

I think in this test people reacted to the light, colour grade, and lens, whereas the sensor and codec were all made to look equally bad.

However in other lighting and lensing situations which people come up against in the real world all the time, a better sensor and codec would have taken a HUGE lead over the Olympus PEN F. Had one of the scenes been in low light for example, or made use of a full frame lens with particularly special rendering.

In the end I totally agree with Mattias that the light and lens are the most important things, and that NDs can cause whacked colour issues, reflection issues and changes in colour temperature as well... But that seems to go against the "specs don't matter" message as clearly a lens matters and is part of the specs of your kit, and a good ND matters as well as colour science specs and how capable the white balance system is. Some of the shots were waaaay too cool looking vs others in the blind test which is partly why I voted against some and for others.

I also agree with Mattias when it comes to the fact people have their own uses for kit, and reasons for preferring one image over another. It's very subjective, which is why pixel peeping and chart testing alone is a total waste of time... I find tests like this WAAAY more enjoyable, and it reminded me of the Zacuto Shootout from way back. Fun stuff.

Whilst I wait for the $200 challenge videos to come in, I may do a similar blind test myself but I want to test a greater mix of gear in mine, including some REAL lemons that people long forgot about for video. I'd like to have each candidate a separate camera, and to show the results on Vimeo where compression isn't such a heavy leveller.

PS... It surprised me J & I got the most votes even though it was quite an even spread. Wouldn't have chosen them myself and I don't think a single person on EOSHD forums did?! Maybe YouTube voters are just a bit weird.

Here's another thought. When shown a sequence of images, people react to the differences between the images.

So if you show a neutral looking colour grade after one which is really fucked up and orange, obviously people will pick the neutral one.

But if you show the neutral one after a nice saturated but film like, slightly warm grade, people might think it was boring.

So by placing same image after different images, the same image (neutral) would get different votes.

Diving deep into The Matrix now, I know...

[kye]

2 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

The results are in. Some are a little funny, others kinda expected but still interesting.

Great test!  Thanks for taking the time to pull that together.  Camera tests are a lot more work than they appear

In a sense I disagree that equipment doesn't matter, but I definitely do agree that the trendy equipment isn't necessarily the one that's right for you.  The best thing to do is to choose the image (as well as features etc) that appeals to your own taste.  Which can really only be done blind.

I found the images to be highly variable - some were lovely and some were awful.  The thing that decided it for me was the aliasing and levels of artificial sharpness that made many of the options unappealing.

Thanks again.

[Andrew Reid]

The biggest mystery of all is how you got Gunpowder to sit still and look into the camera for 10 minutes

[Ingerson]

Surprising results indeed. I didn't intend to pick a certain number of cameras, just pick which image I liked. I picked 3-4 from each scene and all turned out to be the EOS R!

Here I been researching cameras left and right and turned every stone and been looking at everything except Canon because everyone hates them, haha, and in a blind test I preferred Canon. And the ones I've researched the most BMPCC/BMMCC I disliked the most O_o

Perhaps I should just stay with Canon and upgrade from my 1000D since I like the colors, ergonomics and feel at home with the menues, etc. Magic lantern seems kind of difficult if you're non-techie person like myself, so maybe skip the M/70D decision all together and go for the R/RP ?